12-year-old in White House deserves a little understanding

The Boston Herald

BEVERLY BECKHAM

OK, all you professional communicators out there - television anchors and personalities, reporters, columnists, entertainers, satirists, humorists, big shots and little shots alike - raise your right hand and repeat after me:

"I will lay off Chelsea Clinton for the next four years. I will not say or write or even intimate anything negative about her. I will not undermine her, ridicule her or go for a laugh at her expense, either in print or on film.

"I will treat her as if she were my 12-year-old daughter, tenderly, aware that 12 is a tough age to be and that 13 isn't much better, and 14 and 15 are no prizes either, and even an unintentional comment, even a pair of seemingly harmless words such as `frizzy hair' can make a young girl sob and inflict a wound that hurts for a lifetime."

Most girls hate being 12 and 13. They hate the changes in their bodies and want to hide somewhere until the metamorphosis from child to woman is complete. Twelve-year-olds are so uncomfortable with themselves, and so self-critical, it's a wonder they ever leave their rooms.

They look in the mirror and see nothing they like. Their hair is too long, too short, too thin, too thick, the wrong color, the wrong style.

Their face is ugly, their bodies wrong. They cringe when they have to pose for a picture. They want to shrivel and die whenever the spotlight is on them.

Even a casual, non-combative comment can move a 12-year-old to tears. "Oh, you're wearing your jeans to school today, huh?" is interpreted as "Those jeans look awful on you. They make you look hippy. They make your stomach stick out," when all you really meant is, "I'm surprised you're wearing jeans today. You said you were wearing a skirt."

But the 12-year-old is so super-sensitive, her ego so new, that it is like baby skin: It bruises easily.

All 12 longs to do is to blend, to observe but not be observed, and to never be singled out.

Twelve shudders if she's called on in class, even when she knows the answer, because everyone will turn and look at her and her face will burn and her eyes will smart and she'll be thinking suddenly: Is my skirt stuck in the back? Is my blouse tucked in? Do I have food between my teeth? Is my hair a mess? Is my voice shaking? Does everyone think I'm a jerk?

Most 12-year-olds have only small humiliations to suffer: blushing and stammering in class; dropping a tray in a lunchroom; looking bad in front of a handful of friends. Most don't have to grow up in public, before thousands of cameras and millions of eyes. Most aren't subjects of ridicule on "Saturday Night Live."

Chelsea got hit hard already, last week, even before her father took the oath of office. "It was nothing," the adults who write this show might say. "It was just a joke, a way to get a few laughs."

Obviously they were never 12 and never female. Even if Chelsea didn't see herself portrayed as the quintessential geek, her friends did see it, and her friend's brothers and sisters and parents.

People she will attend school with, people she has yet to meet, kids who are her peers and are important to her, who are going to have a hard enough time trying to figure out what they really think of the president's daughter, who now will have to contend with these distorted images of Chelsea, too.

It will be tough for Chelsea, even under the best of circumstances, even if the media is suddenly kind and ignores her, to endure these next four years in the White House. For it is a glass house and the whole world is watching - watching a little girl grow up, transform, blossom and bloom.

She will bloom. All little girls do, but growing from child to teen is difficult. Twelve-year-olds try on different personalities and demeanors, the way they try on lipstick, nail polish and clothes, in search of a face to wear for the world. Through trial and error they learn what works and what doesn't.

Under the spotlight, in the glare of the media, Chelsea will never learn. For everything she does, every face she tries, will be analyzed, criticized and disparaged.

The media must shut off the spotlight and give her space to grow. The satirists must recognize her vulnerability and respect her childhood.

And treat Chelsea as if she were their own.